STEPHEN KING

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947. He won ascholarship award to the University of Maine and later taughtEnglish, while his wife, Tabitha, got her degree. It was the publi-cation of his first novel Carrie and its subsequent adaptation thatset him on his way to over twenty years of world-wide bestsellerdomand his acclaimed position as the master of horror and suspense.Carrie was followed by a string of bestsellers which have includedThe Shining, The Stand, It, Misery, Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantisand Dreamcatcher. Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine, his homestate and the place where he feels he really belongs.

PETER STRAUB

Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee,Wisconsin, in 1943, and waseducated at the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University andUniversity College, Dublin. His bestselling books include GhostStory,Shadowland,Floating Dragon (winner of the 1983 British FantasyAward), Koko (winner of the 1989 World Fantasy Award), Mystery,Houses Without Doors, and The Throat. Peter Straub spent ten yearsin Britain and Ireland, and now lives in New York.

In their bestseller The Talisman Stephen King and Peter Straub havecombined their unique talents to create an unforgettable epic offantasy,adventure and resounding triumph.The result of their secondcollaboration is Black House.

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By Stephen King and published by Hodder & Stoughton:

NovelsCarrie

’Salem’s LotThe ShiningThe Stand

The Dead ZoneFirestarter

CujoCycle of the Werewolf

ChristinePet Sematary

ItSkeleton Crew

The Eyes of the DragonMisery

The TommyknockersThe Dark HalfNeedful ThingsGerald’s Game

Dolores ClaiborneInsomnia

Rose MadderDesperation

Bag of BonesThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Hearts in AtlantisDreamcatcher

Everything’s EventualFrom a Buick 8

CellLisey’s Story

The Dark Tower I: The GunslingerThe Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the

ThreeThe Dark Tower III:The Waste LandsThe Dark Tower IV:Wizard and GlassThe Dark Tower V:Wolves of the CallaThe Dark Tower VI: Song of SusannahThe Dark Tower VII:The Dark Tower

CollectionsNight Shift

Different SeasonsFour Past Midnight

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Non-fictionDanse Macabre

On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft)

By Stephen King as Richard BachmanThinner

The Bachman BooksThe Regulators

Blaze

By Peter Straub:

NovelsMarriages

Under VenusJulia

If You Could See Me NowGhost StoryShadowland

Floating DragonKoko

MysteryMrs God

The ThroatThe Hellfire Club

Mr X

Black House (with Stephen King)Lost Boy Lost GirlThe Night Room

PoetryOpen Air

Leeson Park and Belsize Square

CollectionsWild Animals

Houses Without DoorsPeter Straub’s Ghosts (editor)

Magic Terror

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T H E T A L I S M A N

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Copyright © Stephen King and Peter Straub, 1984

First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd., 1985

This paperback edition published in 2007

The right of Stephen King and Peter Straub to be identified as the Authors of the Work hasbeen asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A Hodder Paperback

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form

or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher,nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover otherthan that in which it is published and without a similar condition

being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblanceto real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 340 95271 9

Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Hodder & Stoughton 338 Euston RoadLondon NW1 3BH

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This book is forRuth King

Elvena Straub

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Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop,we looked away down into the village and could seethree or four lights twinkling, where there was sickfolks, may be; and stars over us was sparkling ever sofine; and down by the village was the river, a wholemile broad, and awful still and grand.

– Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and Iwas dog-tired.

– Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

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Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:Bourne Co. Music Publishers: portions of lyrics from ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’, by Frank E. Churchill and Ann Ronell. Copyright 1933 byBourne Co. Copyright renewed.

Bourne Co.Music Publishers and Callicoon Music: portions of lyrics from ‘Whenthe Red, Red Robin Goes Bob-Bob-Bobbing Along’, music and lyrics by HarryWoods.Copyright 1926 by Bourne Co.and Callicoon Music.Copyright renewed.

CBS Songs, A Division of CBS, Inc.: portions of lyrics from ‘Ruben James’, byBarry Etris and Alex Harvey.Copyright © Unart Music Corporation,1969.Rightsassigned to CBS Catalogue Partnership.All rights controlled and administered byCBS Unart Catalog, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Anexcerpt from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, music by Harold Arlen. Copyright © 1938, renewed 1966, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc.Copyright 1939,renewed 1967 by Leo Feist,Inc.Rights assigned to CBS CataloguePartnership. All rights controlled and administered by CBS Feist Catalog, Inc.All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Hudson Bay Music, Inc., and T.M. Music Ltd: portions of lyrics from ‘Long LineRider’ (Bobby Darin). Copyright © Alley Music Corporation and Trio MusicCompany, Inc. All rights administered by Hudson Bay Music, Inc. All rightsreserved.

Jondora Music: portions of lyrics from ‘Run Through the Jungle’, by John Fogarty. Copyright © Jondora Music, 1973, courtesy Fantasy, Inc., Berkeley,California.

Sanga Music, Inc., and Harmony Music Ltd: portions of lyrics from ‘Gotta TravelOn’, by Paul Clayton, David Lazar, Larry Ehrlich, and Tom Six. Copyright ©Sanga Music, Inc., 1958, 1960. All rights reserved.

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CONTENTS

PART I: JACK LIGHTS OUT 11 The Alhambra Inn and Gardens 32 The Funnel Opens 153 Speedy Parker 334 Jack Goes Over 595 Jack and Lily 82

Interlude Sloat in This World (I) 102

PART II: THE ROAD OF TRIALS 1156 The Queen’s Pavilion 1177 Farren 1328 The Oatley Tunnel 1809 Jack in the Pitcher Plant 195

10 Elroy 22611 The Death of Jerry Bledsoe 24412 Jack Goes to the Market 26413 The Men in the Sky 27314 Buddy Parkins 30015 Snowball Sings 31816 Wolf 339

Interlude Sloat in This World (II) 34817 Wolf and the Herd 35118 Wolf Goes to the Movies 36719 Jack in the Box 392

PART III: A COLLISION OF WORLDS 42520 Taken by the Law 42721 The Sunlight Home 445

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22 The Sermon 46123 Ferd Janklow 48424 Jack Names the Planets 50225 Jack and Wolf Go to Hell 51426 Wolf in the Box 52927 Jack Lights Out Again 56428 Jack’s Dream 56829 Richard at Thayer 57730 Thayer Gets Weird 59331 Thayer Goes to Hell 59932 ‘Send Out Your Passenger!’ 60633 Richard in the Dark 620

Interlude Sloat in This World/Orris in the Territories (III) 643

PART IV: THE TALISMAN 65734 Anders 659

Interlude Sloat in This World (IV) 68235 The Blasted Lands 68836 Jack and Richard Go to War 73037 Richard Remembers 75438 The End of the Road 78939 Point Venuti 79840 Speedy on the Beach 816

Interlude Sloat in This World (V) 83541 The Black Hotel 84342 Jack and the Talisman 86343 News from Everywhere 88544 The Earthquake 89645 In Which Many Things Are Resolved on

the Beach 91646 Another Journey 94347 Journey’s End 960

Epilogue 979

Conclusion 981

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CHAPTER ONE

THE ALHAMBRA INNAND GARDENS

1On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stoodwhere the water and land come together,hands in the pocketsof his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic. He was twelveyears old and tall for his age.The sea-breeze swept back hisbrown hair, probably too long, from a fine, clear brow. Hestood there, filled with the confused and painful emotionshe had lived with for the last three months – since the timewhen his mother had closed their house on Rodeo Drivein Los Angeles and, in a flurry of furniture, checks, and real-estate agents, rented an apartment on Central Park West.From that apartment they had fled to this quiet resort onNew Hampshire’s tiny seacoast. Order and regularity haddisappeared from Jack’s world. His life seemed as shifting, asuncontrolled, as the heaving water before him. His motherwas moving him through the world, twitching him fromplace to place; but what moved his mother?

His mother was running, running.Jack turned around, looking up the empty beach first

to the left, then to the right.To the left was Arcadia Funworld,an amusement park that ran all racket and roar from Memorial

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Day to Labor Day. It stood empty and still now, a heartbetween beats.The roller coaster was a scaffold against thatfeatureless, overcast sky, the uprights and angled supports likestrokes done in charcoal. Down there was his new friend,Speedy Parker, but the boy could not think about SpeedyParker now.To the right was the Alhambra Inn and Gardens,and that was where the boy’s thoughts relentlessly took him.On the day of their arrival Jack had momentarily thoughthe’d seen a rainbow over its dormered and gambreled roof.A sign of sorts, a promise of better things. But there hadbeen no rainbow. A weathervane spun right-left, left-right,caught in a crosswind. He had got out of their rented car,ignoring his mother’s unspoken desire for him to do some-thing about the luggage, and looked up. Above the spinningbrass cock of the weathervane hung only a blank sky.

‘Open the trunk and get the bags, sonny boy,’ hismother had called to him. ‘This broken-down old actresswants to check in and hunt down a drink.’

‘An elementary martini,’ Jack had said.‘“You’re not so old,” you were supposed to say.’ She

was pushing herself effortfully off the carseat.‘You’re not so old.’She gleamed at him – a glimpse of the old, go-to-hell

Lily Cavanaugh (Sawyer), queen of two decades’ worth ofB movies. She straightened her back. ‘It’s going to be okayhere, Jacky,’ she had said.‘Everything’s going to be okay here.This is a good place.’

A seagull drifted over the roof of the hotel, and for asecond Jack had the disquieting sensation that the weather-vane had taken flight.

‘We’ll get away from the phone calls for a while, right?’‘Sure,’ Jack had said. She wanted to hide from Uncle

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Morgan, she wanted no more wrangles with her deadhusband’s business partner, she wanted to crawl into bedwith an elementary martini and hoist the covers over herhead . . .

Mom, what’s wrong with you?There was too much death, the world was half-made

of death. The gull cried out overhead.‘Andelay, kid, andelay,’ his mother had said. ‘Let’s get

into the Great Good Place.’Then, Jack had thought: At least there’s always Uncle

Tommy to help out in case things get really hairy.But Uncle Tommy was already dead; it was just that

the news was still on the other end of a lot of telephonewires.

2The Alhambra hung out over the water, a great Victorianpile on gigantic granite blocks which seemed to merge almostseamlessly with the low headland – a jutting collarbone ofgranite here on the few scant miles of New Hampshireseacoast.The formal gardens on its landward side were barelyvisible from Jack’s beachfront angle – a dark green flip ofhedge, that was all. The brass cock stood against the sky,quartering west by northwest. A plaque in the lobbyannounced that it was here, in 1838, that the NorthernMethodist Conference had held the first of the great NewEngland abolition rallies. Daniel Webster had spoken at fiery,inspired length. According to the plaque, Webster had said:‘From this day forward, know that slavery as an Americaninstitution has begun to sicken and must soon die in all ourstates and territorial lands.’

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3So they had arrived on that day last week which had endedthe turmoil of their months in New York. In Arcadia Beachthere were no lawyers employed by Morgan Sloat poppingout of cars and waving papers which had to be signed, hadto be filed, Mrs Sawyer. In Arcadia Beach the telephonesdid not ring out from noon until three in the morning(Uncle Morgan appeared to forget that residents of CentralPark West were not on California time). In fact the tele-phones in Arcadia Beach rang not at all.

On the way into the little resort town, his motherdriving with squinty-eyed concentration, Jack had seen onlyone person on the streets – a mad old man desultorilypushing an empty shopping cart along a sidewalk. Abovethem was that blank gray sky, an uncomfortable sky. In totalcontrast to New York, here there was only the steady soundof the wind, hooting up deserted streets that looked muchtoo wide with no traffic to fill them. Here were empty shopswith signs in the windows saying OPEN WEEKENDS ONLY

or, even worse, SEE YOU IN JUNE! There were a hundredempty parking places on the street before the Alhambra,empty tables in the Arcadia Tea and Jam Shoppe next door.

And shabby-crazy old men pushed shopping carts alongdeserted streets.

‘I spent the happiest three weeks of my life in thisfunny little place,’ Lily told him, driving past the old man(who turned, Jack saw, to look after them with frightenedsuspicion – he was mouthing something but Jack could nottell what it was) and then swinging the car up the curveddrive through the front gardens of the hotel.

For that was why they had bundled everything they

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could not live without into suitcases and satchels and plasticshopping bags, turned the key in the lock on the apart-ment door (ignoring the shrill ringing of the telephone,which seemed to penetrate that same keyhole and pursuethem down the hall); that was why they had filled the trunkand back seat of the rented car with all their overflowingboxes and bags and spent hours crawling north along theHenry Hudson Parkway, then many more hours poundingup I-95 – because Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer had once beenhappy here. In 1968, the year before Jack’s birth, Lily hadbeen nominated for an Academy Award for her role in apicture called Blaze. Blaze was a better movie than mostof Lily’s, and in it she had been able to demonstrate amuch richer talent than her usual bad-girl roles hadrevealed. Nobody expected Lily to win, least of all Lily;but for Lily the customary cliché about the real honorbeing in the nomination was honest truth – she did feelhonored, deeply and genuinely, and to celebrate this onemoment of real professional recognition, Phil Sawyer hadwisely taken her for three weeks to the Alhambra Inn andGardens, on the other side of the continent, where theyhad watched the Oscars while drinking champagne in bed.(If Jack had been older, and had he had an occasion tocare, he might have done the necessary subtraction anddiscovered that the Alhambra had been the place of hisessential beginning.)

When the Supporting Actress nominations were read,according to family legend, Lily had growled to Phil, ‘If Iwin this thing and I’m not there, I’ll do the Monkey onyour chest in my stiletto heels.’

But when Ruth Gordon had won, Lily had said, ‘Sure,she deserves it, she’s a great kid.’And had immediately poked

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her husband in the middle of the chest and said,‘You’d betterget me another part like that, you big-shot agent you.’

There had been no more parts like that. Lily’s last role,two years after Phil’s death, had been that of a cynical ex-prostitute in a film called Motorcycle Maniacs.

It was that period Lily was commemorating now, Jack knewas he hauled the baggage out of the trunk and the backseat. A D’Agostino bag had torn right down throughthe big D’AG, and a jumble of rolled-up socks, loose photo-graphs, chessmen and the board, comic books, had dribbledover all else in the trunk. Jack managed to get most ofthis stuff into other bags. Lily was moving slowly up thehotel steps, pulling herself along on the railing like anold lady. ‘I’ll find the bellhop,’ she said without turningaround.

Jack straightened up from the bulging bags and lookedagain at the sky where he was sure he had seen a rainbow.There was no rainbow, only that uncomfortable, shiftingsky.

Then:‘Come to me,’ someone said behind him in a small

and perfectly audible voice.‘What?’ he asked, turning around.The empty gardens

and drive stretched out before him.‘Yes?’ his mother said. She looked crickle-backed,

leaning over the knob of the great wooden door.‘Mistake,’ he said.There had been no voice, no rainbow.

He forgot both and looked up at his mother, who was strug-gling with the vast door. ‘Hold on, I’ll help,’ he called, andtrotted up the steps, awkwardly carrying a big suitcase and astraining paper bag filled with sweaters.

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4Until he met Speedy Parker, Jack had moved through thedays at the hotel as unconscious of the passage of time as asleeping dog. His entire life seemed almost dreamlike to himduring these days, full of shadows and inexplicable transi-tions. Even the terrible news about Uncle Tommy whichhad come down the telephone wires the night before hadnot entirely awakened him, as shocking as it had been. IfJack had been a mystic, he might have thought that otherforces had taken him over and were manipulating his mother’slife and his own. Jack Sawyer at twelve was a being whorequired things to do, and the noiseless passivity of thesedays, after the hubbub of Manhattan, had confused andundone him in some basic way.

Jack had found himself standing on the beach with norecollection of having gone there, no idea of what he wasdoing there at all. He supposed he was mourning UncleTommy, but it was as though his mind had gone to sleep,leaving his body to fend for itself. He could not concen-trate long enough to grasp the plots of the sitcoms he andLily watched at night, much less keep the nuances of fictionin his head.

‘You’re tired from all this moving around,’ his mothersaid,dragging deeply on a cigarette and squinting at him throughthe smoke. ‘All you have to do, Jack-O, is relax for a littlewhile.This is a good place. Let’s enjoy it as long as we can.’

Bob Newhart, before them in a slightly too-reddishcolor on the set, bemusedly regarded a shoe he held in hisright hand.

‘That’s what I’m doing, Jacky.’ She smiled at him.‘Relaxing and enjoying it.’

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He peeked at his watch. Two hours had passed whilethey sat in front of the television, and he could not rememberanything that had preceded this program.

Jack was getting up to go to bed when the phonerang. Good old Uncle Morgan Sloat had found them. UncleMorgan’s news was never very great, but this was apparentlya blockbuster even by Uncle Morgan’s standards. Jack stoodin the middle of the room, watching as his mother’s facegrew pale, paler, palest. Her hand crept to her throat, wherenew lines had appeared over the last few months, and pressedlightly. She said barely a word until the end, when she whis-pered, ‘Thank you, Morgan,’ and hung up. She had turnedto Jack then, looking older and sicker than ever.

‘Got to be tough now, Jacky, all right?’He hadn’t felt tough.She took his hand then and told him.‘Uncle Tommy was killed in a hit-and-run accident

this afternoon, Jack.’He gasped, feeling as if the wind had been torn out

of him.‘He was crossing La Cienega Boulevard and a van hit

him. There was a witness who said it was black, and thatthe words WILD CHILD were written on the side, but thatwas . . . was all.’

Lily began to cry. A moment later, almost surprised,Jack began to cry as well. All of that had happened threedays ago, and to Jack it seemed forever.

5On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stoodlooking out at the steady water as he stood on an unmarked

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beach before a hotel that looked like a castle in a Sir WalterScott novel. He wanted to cry but was unable to releasehis tears. He was surrounded by death, death made up halfthe world, there were no rainbows. The WILD CHILD vanhad subtracted Uncle Tommy from the world. UncleTommy, dead in L.A., too far from the east coast, whereeven a kid like Jack knew he really belonged. A man whofelt he had to put on a tie before going out to get a roastbeef sandwich at Arby’s had no business on the west coastat all.

His father was dead, Uncle Tommy was dead, hismother might be dying. He felt death here, too, at ArcadiaBeach,where it spoke through telephones in Uncle Morgan’svoice. It was nothing as cheap or obvious as the melan-choly feel of a resort in the off-season, where one keptstumbling over the Ghosts of Summers Past; it seemed tobe in the texture of things, a smell on the ocean breeze.He was scared . . . and he had been scared for a long time.Being here, where it was so quiet, had only helped him torealize it – had helped him to realize that maybe Death haddriven all the way up I-95 from New York, squinting outthrough cigarette smoke and asking him to find some bopon the car radio.

He could remember – vaguely – his father telling himthat he was born with an old head, but his head didn’t feelold now. Right now, his head felt very young. Scared, hethought. I’m pretty damn scared. This is where the world ends,right?

Seagulls coursed the gray air overhead.The silence wasas gray as the air – as deadly as the growing circles underher eyes.

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6When he had wandered into Funworld and met LesterSpeedy Parker after he did not quite know how many daysof numbly drifting through time, that passive feeling of beingon hold had somehow left him. Lester Parker was a blackman with crinkly gray hair and heavy lines cutting throughhis cheeks. He was utterly unremarkable now despite what-ever he had accomplished in his earlier life as a travellingblues musician.Nor had he said anything particularly remark-able.Yet as soon as Jack had walked aimlessly into Funworld’sgame arcade and met Speedy’s pale eyes he felt all the fuzzi-ness leave him. He had become himself again. It was as if amagical current had passed directly from the old man intoJack. Speedy had smiled at him and said, ‘Well, it looks likeI got me some company. Little travellin man just walked in.’

It was true, he was not on hold anymore: just an instantbefore, he had seemed to be wrapped in wet wool and cottoncandy, and now he was set free. A silvery nimbus seemed toplay about the old man for an instant, a little aureole of lightwhich disappeared as soon as Jack blinked. For the first timeJack saw that the man was holding the handle of a wideheavy push-broom.

‘You okay, son?’ The handyman put one hand in thesmall of his back, and stretched backward. ‘The world justget worse, or did she get better?’

‘Uh, better,’ Jack said.‘Then you come to the right place, I’d say. What do

they call you?’Little travellin man,Speedy had said that first day,ole Travellin

Jack. He had leaned his tall angular body against the Skee-Ballmachine and wrapped his arms around the broomhandle as

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though it were a girl at a dance. The man you see here is LesterSpeedy Parker, formerly a travellin man hisself, son, hee hee – oh,yeah, Speedy knew the road, he knew all the roads, way back in theold days. Had me a band, Travellin Jack, played the blues. Git-tarblues. Made me a few records, too, but I won’t shame you by askingif you ever heard em. Every syllable had its own rhythmic lilt,every phrase its rimshot and backbeat; Speedy Parker carrieda broom instead of a guitar, but he was still a musician.Withinthe first five seconds of talking to Speedy, Jack had knownthat his jazz-loving father would have relished this man’scompany.

He had tagged along behind Speedy for the betterpart of three or four days, watching him work and helpingout when he could. Speedy let him bang in nails, sand downa picket or two that needed paint; these simple tasks doneunder Speedy’s instructions were the only schooling he wasgetting, but they made him feel better. Jack now saw hisfirst days in Arcadia Beach as a period of unrelievedwretchedness from which his new friend had rescued him.For Speedy Parker was a friend, that was certain – so certain,in fact, that in it was a quantity of mystery. In the few dayssince Jack had shaken off his daze (or since Speedy hadshaken it off for him by dispelling it with one glance ofhis light-colored eyes), Speedy Parker had become closerto him than any other friend, with the possible exceptionof Richard Sloat, whom Jack had known approximatelysince the cradle.And now, counteracting his terror at losingUncle Tommy and his fear that his mother was actuallydying, he felt the tug of Speedy’s warm wise presence fromjust down the street.

Again, and uncomfortably, Jack had his old sense ofbeing directed, of being manipulated: as if a long invisible wire

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had pulled himself and his mother up to this abandonedplace by the sea.

They had wanted him here, whoever they were.Or was that just crazy? In his inner vision he saw a

bent old man, clearly out of his mind, muttering to himselfas he pushed an empty shopping cart down the sidewalk.

A gull screamed in the air, and Jack promised himselfthat he would make himself talk about some of his feelingswith Speedy Parker. Even if Speedy thought he was nuts;even if he laughed at Jack. He would not laugh, Jack secretlyknew.They were old friends because one of the things Jackunderstood about the old custodian was that he could sayalmost anything to him.

But he was not ready for all that yet. It was all toocrazy, and he did not understand it yet himself.Almost reluc-tantly Jack turned his back on Funworld and trudged acrossthe sand toward the hotel.

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